When I was growing up, a man in our town ran for town board. He had the same last name as a well-respected citizen and just enough people were confused by the similarity in names that he was elected. He made the mistake in assuming that since he’d been elected to office, he had power, so he proceeded to visit all the department heads—street, police, fire, parks, water and wastewater─and give them ill-conceived orders, which they ignored. He alienated so many of the town workers that when the Blizzard of 78 hit, the street department piled snow in front of his driveway for several weeks so he couldn’t get out to boss them around. In a small town, it’s the guy who drives the snowplow who has the power and you forget that at your own peril.
I think of that whenever I bump into someone who thinks power is about position and nothing else, who fails to realize that true power is rooted in expertise, kindness, and character. This is the difference between commanding and leading. Donald Trump might well have the power to command, but has proven time and again he lacks the moral authority to lead, which means we are under no obligation to follow his edicts. Power is never solely a matter of position; it is also a matter of one’s ethical stature, and wherever that is lacking, we have no responsibility to mindlessly follow. We are never obligated to obey a man who breaks the law, to respect a church who protects abusers, to support a nation who denies its citizens liberty and justice.
Our founding fathers and mothers believed governments derived their authority not from their role or position, but from the consent of the people they govern. When we the people don’t consent to be led, governments lose their power to lead us.
Today, I want to talk about power. There is institutional power, whose authority is position-based, and there is moral power, whose authority is ethically-based. It is moral power that serves as the corrective to the abuses of institutional power. This was the power of Jesus who challenged Herod, the power of early Friends who fought slavery, the power of Minneapolis citizens today standing against the tyranny of ICE agents. Throughout human history, righteous moral power has always triumphed over unrighteous institutional power. Not immediately, but inevitably.
I was speaking with a woman this week who was lamenting her perceived lack of power. She said, “I wish I was in charge, so I could do something.” Which, if you think about it, is the exact opposite of the man who was elected to our town board and believed that being in charge gave him all the power. The man on the town board thought he had lots of power, and the woman talking with me thought she had no power. Both were mistaken, the man in overestimating his power, the woman in underestimating hers.
Just as we should avoid the overestimation of our own importance, so too should we avoid the underestimation of our influence. The woman I was speaking with is well-respected in our community. She said, “I wish I could speak up, but no one would listen to me if I did.” I disagreed and advised her to speak up. She said it would make little difference, that she had no audience, no influence, no social media followers. But we cannot leave it to the well-known and well-positioned to speak. Steven Miller is well-known and well-positioned. Franklin Graham is well-known and well-positioned. Elon Musk owns one of the largest social media platforms in the world. Are we willing to let them be the leading voices?
I love the story of the Quaker Benjamin Lay. Four feet tall, humpbacked, with a protruding chest. Tragically disfigured since birth. Born in England to Quaker parents in 1682, he came to America via Barbados where he witnessed an enslaved man commit suicide rather than being beaten again by his enslaver. A glovemaker, farmer, and day laborer, when he rose to speak in Quaker meeting against slavery no one listened. Yet he continued, persisting in his witness until finally four meetings disowned him. Two hundered and eighty years later, in 2018, Southern East Anglia Area Meeting, part of Britain Yearly Meeting, became the last of the four meetings to rescind its disowning of Benjamin Lay.
Though he was disowned, he nevertheless persisted, and one person listened, and in 1737 Benjamin Franklin printed Benjamin Lay’s book All Slave Keepers That keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates. So it was that a man no one listened to, was eventually heard by hundreds of thousands, one of whom was John Woolman, who first heard Lay speak the next year, 1738, at the Burlington, New Jersey meetinghouse.
Lay had hidden a bladder of pokeberry juice in his Bible and pulled from his coat a dagger which he plunged into his Bible, causing the pokeberry juice to splatter the wealthy Quaker slaveholders seated around him, saying, “Thus shall the Lord spill the blood of those who enslave His children!” Lay was thrown from the meetinghouse into the gutter. Woolman hurried outside to help him to his feet, but Lay refused to move, saying only the men who had thrown him in the gutter could lift him out of it. So there he lay as the departing Quakers stepped over him. Sixteen years later, in 1754, Woolman published his first book Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes. Without Benjamin Lay, there is no John Woolman, without John Woolman, there is no eventual rejection of slavery among Friends. Aren’t you profoundly grateful no one ever told Benjamin Lay he had no influence, no voice, no power? Whenever I feel hopeless and without power, I think of Benjamin Lay, who in his young years saw a desperate man kill himself, so vowed he would bring help and hope to the enslaved, and did.
Not in one day, for the work of justice is a long game, just as our labors today will not result in victory tomorrow. Just as our nation’s moral poverty did not materialize overnight, neither will it be solved overnight. But it will be solved. Every day the weight of judgment falls more heavily upon Donald Trump and his collaborators. They are creatures of privilege and ease, unaccustomed to struggle, so ultimately will not bear the strain. They may have the guns, but we have the guts. They may have the prisons, but we have the persistence. They may have the money, but we have the morality. They may well have the Goliaths, but we have the Davids, and we know, don’t we, who beat who.